Category Archives: Global Warming

Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s a convenient excuse,’ Burgess said. Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. ‘You’ll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn’t in the past with some regularity,’ he said.

I wonder if this is a reporter prompted response or the ‘expert’ personally believes Global Warming(tm) is causing the attacks. In either case, since ocean temperatures are falling:

The world’s oceans cooled suddenly between 2003 and 2005, losing more than 20 percent of the global-warming heat they’d absorbed over the previous 50 years. That’s a vast amount of heat, since the oceans hold 1,000 times as heat as the atmosphere. The ocean-cooling researchers say the heat was likely vented into space, since it hasn’t been found stored anywhere on Earth.

It seems like a rather illogical conclusion to reach doesn’t it? What isn’t being blamed on Global Warming these days? It’s gotten to the point where the whole thing is a joke. This is caused by it; that’s caused by it. It’s really no wonder at all that the same number of people worry about it today as they did 20 years ago. All these blizzards during Earth Day/Global Warming celebrations in April aren’t going to get those numbers higher.

It brings me to tears to have to admit this; but the Loch Ness Monster is dead, victim of that there Global Warming(tm). He, apparently died recently, although it survived for many thousands, if not millions of years, through global temperature variations that ranged between 10 and 20 degrees in celcius, in its part of the world.

But alas, that 0.5 degree change over the past 100 years were too much and it succumbed to Global Warming(tm). It was then dragged onto the shore and run over multiple times by a pack of wild SUVs – just to be safe.

Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.

Everyone light a candle tonight; for this is the end of an era. Another mythical monster is dead; but at least we know the cause this time. Global Warming. Bastards. When will this madness ever end?

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

I’ve also mentioned solar variability before. The sun is a star, its energy output is not constant. It goes up and down. Changes in our climate more closely match the frequency of Sunspots than anything else and it certainly does not match CO2.

Lead author David Douglass said: “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.”

Can we end this debate now? Peer reviewed papers on the Global Warming(tm) side are hard to find and Al Gore’s movie has been proven wrong on countless occasions and has even been proven to be lies by a UK court.

I’m sure the neo-communists who back this movement will continue to blame humans for global warming and wish we were back in the stone age, but it’s really time to stop the self hate and live our lives like we always have.

So environmentalists have come out (once again) in support of deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats as the cure for global warming. As previously discussed, poor countries are encouraged to destroy their local environment for the benefit of rich countries.

He added that, with a bit of investment, climate change was a “phenomenal opportunity to develop poor countries.” Ethiopia was considering investing in growing cane for biofuels, he noted, a path that has already brought great profits to Brazil.

Yes. Brazil has been profiting quite nicely off of biofuels. Most notably from sugar cane. Wonder where they are getting the land to produce all of these biofuels?

Brazil, the world’s largest producer of soybeans, is more than making up for shortfall, by clearing new land for soy cultivation. While only a fraction of this cultivation currently occurs in the Amazon rainforest, production in neighboring areas like the cerrado grassland helps drive deforestation by displacing small farmers and cattle producers, who then clear rainforest land for subsistence agriculture and pasture.

So, I am assuming that environmentalists – who used to want to protect the Rainforest – now believe that removing it is the answer. I am loving watching the environmental movement implode over its own hypocrisies.

I’m going to my backyard to chop down a few trees myself. Why not? The policy is officially sanctioned by sanctimonious environmentalists. Level everything and plant biofuel crops. And earn carbon credits while you do it. Man this saving the planet stuff is just awesome.

Rapeseed and maize (ed. corn) biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised.

What, you mean that the “solution” to the problem is far worse than the original problem. I think I’ve heard this record before:

Some of the replacement chemicals whose use has grown because of the Montreal treaty — hydrochloroflourocarbons, or HCFCs, and their byproducts, hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs — decompose faster than CFCs because they contain hydrogen.

But, like CFCs, they are considered potent greenhouse gases that harm the climate — up to 10,000 times worse than carbon dioxide emissions.

Yes. It has happened before. The replacement for CFC’s in refrigerators, air conditioning, etc were replaced with chemicals that are 10,000 times worse. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, indeed.

“The countries that haven’t really been the target of deforestation have nothing to sell because they haven’t deforested anything,” says Gustavo Fonseca, one of the study’s authors. “So that creates a perverse incentive for them to actually start deforesting, so that in the future, they might be allowed to actually cap-and-trade, as they call it: you put a cap on your deforestation and you trade that piece that hasn’t been deforested.”

And you have to wonder. Is the environmental movement trying to kill us all?

It’s the storyline that matters; not reality. The AP shows their true colors once again. Much like Reuters did a few months ago.

Under the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the United States joined a U.N. meeting in Kyoto and agreed to the protocol. But the United States rejected it under the administration of President George W. Bush, Clinton’s successor.

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

Basic research on a basic issue. It’s beyond the AP. And its beyond Reuters. Why am I not surprised?

Sometimes I amaze myself. Three days after talking about how wonderfully delicious a nearly extinct creature might be, everyone’s (mine and yours!) environmental hero serves up some nearly extinct creatures to a party of 75 people. Why wasn’t I invited?

You’d think the saviour of the planet would save such a rare meal – possibly the last one ever! – of Chilean Sea Bass for a special occasion. Like a wedding. Nope. It was for a wedding rehearsal.

Only a week after Live Earth, eco-warrior Al Gore didn’t do much for his green credentials when he shocked fellow environmentalists by serving up an endangered fish at his daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner.

The former US vicepresident provided 75 guests with Chilean sea bass – one of the world’s most threatened fish species.

If that’s the opening course for the wedding, what will be the main course? A panda bear? Knut?

Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?Number Two: Sea Bass.Dr. Evil: [pause] Right.Number Two: They’re mutated sea bass.Dr. Evil: Are they ill tempered?Number Two: Absolutely.Dr. Evil: Oh well, that’s a start.

All-in-all, I’d rate this eating of a nearly extinct creature a 6 out of 10. Nice effort. But people care more about furry mammals. If you are going to eat something that’s about to go extinct, make sure it has lots of soft fur and big puppy dog eyes.

Many Arctic plant species have readily adjusted to big climate changes, repeatedly recolonizing the rugged islands of the remote Svalbard archipelago off Norway’s coast through 20,000 years of warm and cool spells since the frigid peak of the last ice age, researchers report in today’s issue of the journal Science.

Their finding implies that, in the Arctic at least, plants may be able to shift long distances to follow the climate conditions for which they are best adapted as those conditions move under the influence of human-caused global warming, the researchers and some independent experts said.

Man, those SUVs and factories have been pumping out global warming gasses longer than I ever realized!

Oh wait; they mean that the planet has undergone warming and cooling in the past. And here I thought that the planet always stayed at a constant temperature and that temperatures were perfect in 1906, when glaciers reached their maximum point in many regions. Amazing.

And, apparently, plants and animals have the ability to adapt to the changes as well.

“As the proper habitat is available, plants will survive,” she said. “I have not seen this demonstrated so clearly as it is in this paper. If dispersal is not a limiting factor, then maybe the rate of warming ongoing in the Arctic will not be a limiting factor in plant survival in distant places.”

This science thing is amazing. One could wonder how much we could actually learn about this planet if agendas didn’t drive everything.

Al Gore, in his movie Inconvenient Truth, points to Mount Kilimanjaro as proof, in part, that Global Warming threatens humanity. Immediately, skeptics jumped on this, saying that Kilimanjaro has been slowly melting for centuries:

In the film, Gore points to Mt. Kilimanjaro as an example of global warming’s impact on alpine glaciers. Robert Balling, a climatologist at Arizona State University writes, however, that the shrinking glaciers atop Africa’s famed volcano have been disappearing for more than a century. Two studies published in 2004 suggest the retreat was triggered by declining rainfall since the end of the 1800s.

Other stories point to this mountain as their evidence behind Global Warming and the danger it imposes.

Keipper’s photos speak for themselves, dramatic proof of a scientific near-certainty: Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are disappearing. The ice fields Ernest Hemingway once described as “wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun” have lost 82 percent of their ice since 1912—the year their full extent was first measured.

A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world’s biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.

Gathering in London for a two-day brainstorming session on the environment agenda of Britain’s presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations, the environment and energy ministers from 20 countries will be handed a book containing the stark image of Africa’s tallest mountain, among others.

“This is a wake-up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable,” said Steve Howard of the Climate Group charity which organised the book and an associated exhibition.

Kilimanjaro’s ice has been melting away for more than a century, and most of that melt occurred before 1953, prior to the period where science begins to be conclusive about atmospheric warming in that region, according to Philip Mote of the University of Washington and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Also, as a tropical glacier, the processes governing ice melt on Kilimanjaro (located in Tanzania) are different than those on other mid-latitude glaciers located closer to the Earth’s poles.

These other mid-latitude glaciers become warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, while the air around Kilimanjaro’s 19,340-foot peak (the tallest in Africa) is generally well below freezing.

Instead, melt on Kilimanjaro is caused by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures—essentially the glacier gets a giant case of moisture-sapping freezer burn.

You’d think Gore, as an expert environmental scientist would realize this, don’t you? I guess he has more important things on his mind than facts. Oh well.

Again; this is my problem with the concept as anthromorphic Global Warming. We simply do not know enough about our planet to tell us what causes it. The sun? Sunspots? The oceans? Aliens farting on Omicron Persei 8? We simply do not know enough to say for sure. Doing “something” when you don’t even have all the facts is not a wise course of action.

Given that sunspots is, seemingly, the best fit pattern to a warming and cooling trend on this planet (and others in the solar system), why is it continually being ignored for carbon dioxide emissions, economic regulation, and farsical carbon credit schemes? Is the environment even the real agenda here?

I usually rail on global warming models by saying the models are fallible. They can change depending on what variables are plugged in, which are given priority, etc. But I don’t think enough people understand why this is important.

So, let’s take an example of something you figure a computer model could figure out very easily. The running speed of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We have several complete skeletons of these in museums and for research. Given what is known about the species and dinosaurs in general; you’d think that ascertaining their running speed would be a piece of cake wouldn’t you? Not so.

According to Wikipedia, we have several theories on its running speed. Some people claim its maximum speed was 11 mph. Other sites note that it’s maximum speed would have been up to 45 mph. Quite a difference. Using physics models, in 2002, physicists decided that:

Given the extensive unknowns, the pair hesitate to put a specific upper bound on the maximum speed of T. rex. “Speeds of 11 m/s [25 mph] would be pushing it,” says Hutchinson, “but 20 m/s [45 mph] is not reasonable.”

Improved models today show that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was a slower moving creature, needing to take its weight (for balance) into consideration, probably making it slower – like an elephant – rather than quick and agile – like a bird.

The model results, detailed in the June 21 issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, also showed that T. rex would have had considerable inertia preventing it from turning quickly; a 45-degree turn would have taken one or two seconds — far longer than for a human.

These calculations lend further support to previous research indicating that the large tyrannosaurs could run no faster than 25 mph (and certainly not the 45 mph seen in some movies), because its leg muscles weren’t big enough for fast running.

So, now we will have debate about the top speed of a Tyrannosaurus Rex; one based on computer models and another that is also based on computer models. We have complete skeletons of this dinosaur, so we know -far- more about the T. Rex than we know about our planet and its environment.

But this set of computer models shows distinctly different data than other computer models. Isn’t it safe to say that environmental computer models show the exact same thing? And doesn’t this bring this article into focus just a little bit more?